Pathways to Persotopias 

If the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries established the high-water mark of Persianate transregionalism, then the following two centuries were defined not so much by the undoing of this world in toto, but by its redeployment and regeneration in new cultural guises and (trans)national contexts. This article begins by exploring the resonances of the Persianate world to assess how a cosmopolitan ecumene appeared in new guises in the modern era. The article then transitions to contemporary times to explore the entangled literary-cultural relationships between Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan to ascertain the validity and possibilities of employing a Persianate/Persophone paradigm.